Monday, September 14, 2009

Back to Brimfield

We were on vacation last week. We decided that it would be cool to visit Maine and on the way back, go back to Brimfield. Maine was beautiful. I have never been to Maine before. We went to Belfast and spent a day in Acadia National Park looking for starfish and sea urchins with Elizabeth. Since we are home educators, much of this trip will get logged in as science. On Wednesday we drove to Brimfield, Mass.If you have never been to Brimfield, it is an experience. This year marked the 50th anniversary. It all began in 1959 when an auctioneer opened his property up to 67 dealers to sell their stuff for a few days. Now it has grown to 21 different fields along a one mile stretch of road with some 5000 dealers. If you go to the link above you will see an aerial photograph that will give you an idea of how big this show is.This year I had the privilege of running into someone that I used to work with in my Pittsburgh days some 15 years ago. Jack Dill is an auctioneer that I worked with for about a year and a half. He now has his own business. He bought an old Victorian house back in 1994 and proceeded to renovate it. He has been selling at Brimfield for 25 years. It is because of him that I knew about this place. Here he is in action!

Elizabeth was in her element. She collects Wade figurines and had discovered an entire box full of the things when I took this photo

We also discovered a great craft item for kids when we went to one local restaurant. They are called wikkistix. These wax covered pieces of string can be used like pipe cleaners to make things. Here is a photo of my figure (on the right, in a pike man's pose) and Elizabeth's figure which is about to stick a pie in my face!

But alas, vacation is over. Today I cut the grass, weed whacked the back yard and made a dash to Home Depot to get the wood paneling to fix my termite infested kitchen wall. Tomorrow the craziness associated with running for mayor begins. Only six weeks to election day and then I get my life back!

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

It's Been Awhile .....

Sorry for the delay in posting. You would think I was running for mayor or something ....

What has August brought us. Let's see. Lots of rain has caused much havoc and our bathroom ceiling finally produced a black hole where there once were mushrooms growing out of the wall and ceiling. I have made several trips to the roof with tar and flashing in hand to reduce the effect of the rain. At one point during a severe storm, I emptied three five gallon buckets of water in 7 minutes.

I have been chopping wood. The back yard jungle has been cleared to some extent and needs much more work. There is so much wood debris. We need one of those chiminea things so we can just burn most of it. I'm tempted to take one of our wood stoves outside. In the meantime we have lots of termites back there. As long as they stay away from my kitchen I don't care. What we really need is an anteater for a day or two. A couple of goats would be good too. I wouldn't have to cut the grass.

Now let's talk about the raccoon that has been frequenting our attic. Several nights in a row we have been awakened around 4 AM by something going "BUMP" in the night. On the third floor no less. After investigating the first time we heard it, I found a raccoon climbing up one of the structural joists. After a few prods with a long stick the thing wouldn't budge so I told it to leave quietly and went back to bed! Two more nights it returned and it sounded like the thing was having a relay race around the central chimney up there. So a couple more trips to the roof to plug a few holes and we are back to sleeping like babes except that the dumpsters at the Dollar Tree store are emptied at around 4:30 AM every other morning which is a violation of the noise ordinance I believe. The driver of that truck bangs those things so loud that the whole house shakes. Maybe they need a raccoon to keep them company.